Posted on 04/25/2011 9:49:28 PM PDT by balch3
So, an older relative wants a laptop so he can surf the web from his recliner. His computer skills consist of being able to turn the computer on, open his browser, and do simple word processing/printing. He's tired of viruses and malware. I've been talking up the Macbook. He's decided on the Macbook pro with 17 inch monitor, Way more computer than he needs, but he likes the big monitor because it will be easier on his eyes.
All sounds good, right? That is, until I go online and look at the price. Yikes! Nearly $2500. He can afford it and doesn't seem phased by it, but...still, Yikes! My worst case scenario fantasy is he isn't satisfied and I'll feel guilty for giving him a bum steer. Or, something goes wrong and we have to send it back. Or, I have trouble setting up the wireless LAN--Seems simple enough, but I've never done it before. Or...well, you get the picture.
Somebody talk me into (or out of) this, please?
>>>> You are implying Macs are idiot proof. Not buying it. I’ve built machines that lasted many years, for free, they still run. Some of them (users)will admit to being idiots, but smarter for the concern. It’s easy to fix or replace a PC. Whole or in parts. Apple is Apple. Unix theft IMO. <<<<<
And a (bleeping) good unix system at that !!!
I started with ms dos and now have a windows 7 / linux duel boot . 1 virus in all those yrs , I need a mac why?
I have a two-year old MacBook Pro, which I loved until two weeks ago. That was when a software update broke my MBP’s ability to connect to ANY wireless network that is encrypted with WEP encryption. The basic answer I’ve gotten from Apple is “WEP sucks and you shouldn’t be using it.”
They are currently replacing the Airport card to see if that resolves the issue, but I don’t think it will unless they can find an Airport card with old firmware. We’re going to have a seriously bad argument if they don’t fix this.
I took one home and tried it out and went back and swapped it for the MacBook Air. It’s only about 2 1/2 pounds and I love it.
I just bought the MacBook Pro with the 15” screen and high-res screen. It is awesome, I absolutely love it. That said, if all he wants to do is sit and surf and do some typing, word-processing, then the macBook Pro is overkill. I will second what another poster has said; this will be too hot a machine to have setting on your lap for extended periods of time.
“If it was me. I would have him take a look at an Ipad, hook it up with a blue tooth keypad and let him go.”
Another interesting point here is that the iPad 2 could be hooked up to a suitably placed big screen HDTV. Now THAT would be easy on the eyes. Read some of the comments/reviews here:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC953ZM/A
For $2500 you could get him an iPad and a heck of a TV upgrade... ;-)
This would be a great setup for content consumption and entertainment.
True, true, all true. I was about to post the very same thing. I say that once you go Mac, you never go back.
Nothing is “idiot proof” because we seem to keep breeding increasingly clever idiots. Where Microsoft is concerned, they have a whole engineering department filled with idiots, starting with the guys who can’t seem to get their heads out of their posteriors on the Registry design. But let’s not quibble about technical details right now.
I’m still focused on time. Time is irreplaceable, and some computers, rather than saving time, eat it up. There’s no question in my experience that when I recommend a Mac and someone GETS a Mac, that’s pretty much the only involvement I’m asked for. Because after that, folks seem to not have anywhere near as many problems as the cheapest-possible-PC sort of buyer.
I’ve built many computers over the years, some of which are still working. I’ve seen some PC laptops that were well made (the IBM Thinkpad, for example). And I’ve seen some absolute pieces of crap as well. The Thinkpad my wife used to run as her every day machine wasn’t cheap when we bought it, but it lasted. How much did it cost? More than a Macbook Pro will set you back today.
As for “unix theft.” So what? It isn’t as tho AT&T is doing anything with it any more. Even when AT&T tried to commercialize Unix, they did it so poorly that it was laughable. At the time when everyone else was running BSD 4.3, AT&T comes out with SysVR2 on their 3B2/5/10 platforms... for a guy like me who had seen Unix on VAXen, it was like going back to V7, only with slower hardware. Apple has put a better display manager onto the front of Unix than any other Unix vendor I’ve seen or worked with, including Sun. Apple didn’t bring nothing to the table here; they’ve actually done quite a bit of additional work. It isn’t as tho they just slapped BeOS, Mach and BSD together and called it a release.
Here’s a pic of the 3B2/300, a system I worked on at that time of AT&T trying to commercialize Unix:
http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/3b2/
Brings back memories. (shudder).
I hear you on the mouse. I just replaced my original mouse with a new “Magic Mouse” and the new batteries with a charger. Seems to work well so far, better than the other. The little charger comes with six AA batteries.
A couple more comments on the issue of Unix and Macs:
Most people using Macs will never know there is “Unix” lurking behind the nice GUI. Never. They have no clue, want to have no clue. They want a computer to “just work.” And for the vast majority of Mac users, the Mac does just that: “Just work.”
With no other edition or version of Unix has this been possible, and I say this as a guy who has been around Unix since, oh, BSD 4.2 on VAXen and V7 on PDP-11’s. Yea, I’m dating myself. I actually liked V7. It was clean, small and handy. Back in those days, I got a lot of work done with either RT-11 or V7 on PDP-11’s.
The various desktop Unices on PeeCee hardware are trying... they’re trying so very hard to be seamless and glossy Windows replacement machines... but they have not pulled it off. They might yet in the future, and some editions of Linux are getting closer, but they’ve not closed the deal yet.
Now, as a Unix system goes, OS X is wonderful. I happen to know Unix, have spent the majority of my computing career using one version/edition of Unix or another, and out of all of them, there are only two that I’d put up with for a week: Solaris 2.5 or later, or OS X. The rest... they all have their problems and rough edges.
The nicest thing about OS X is that when I flip open a ‘terminal’ window, I can get bash by default, and I get a bash-on-BSD experience, which any true Unix hacker prefers over SysV. I don’t really care about the microkernel issues, or whether something down against the hardware is Mach or BeOS or BSD. I’ll care about that if and when I write a driver... which won’t likely be anytime soon, because I’ve moved on to doing other things with computers in the last few years. However, for picking up some FSF/GNU/etc open-source software and either porting or compiling it up... OS X is a breeze of a target to hack to. Pud easy. A heck of a lot easier than porting GNU/FSF software to SysV was in the early days, lemme tell you.
And when I want to quit dealing with Unix... I just close up the terminal window and go back to “just using” my machine as an ignorant user. I have no need to open a terminal window except when I want to play Unix hacker again. And when I want to have a foot in each word, I have tools like AquaEmacs: All of the Unix-geek power of Emacs, with a pretty Cocoa GUI. Sweet.
Sounds like the perfect person for a Mac. In addition you should get the Apple Care. That way they can call Apple for all their issues instead of you.
What, the IBM? Yes, but the number of patches to Windows NT has so slowed it down that it is nearly unusable today. And no modern anti-virus program will support Windows back that far, so we have pretty much mothballed it.
Still has one of the best keyboards on a laptop I’ve ever felt. But then, I’ve always liked IBM keyboards. To me, there has never been a better keyboard than the IBM 3270 series of terminals, especially the IBM 3279.
Things to consider before buying:
Do you (or your friend) have any Windows-only software that they would miss? It is possible to run Windows software on a Mac, but it requires extra effort.Good luck!Can you live with the keyboard? I held off getting a Macbook for a long time just because of the keyboard. I then discovered that it required a very light touch, and then it turned out to be adequate.
Can you live with the shiny screen? They look great in the store, but IMHO they are harder to use, since they reflect every stray bit of light. One reason I chose the 17" model was that it had an optional non-reflective screen. I believe that the 15" models now have the same option.
I’ve seen some PC laptops that were well made (the IBM Thinkpad, for example)Before I bought my Macbook Pro, I had an IBM ThinkPad T-60, which I also liked very much. I think that the ThinkPads have the best keyboard of any laptop I've ever used.
Interestingly, my ThinkPad, which was comparable to my MacBook, cost over $2200. So, there really isn't much difference in price between a good Windows laptop and an Apple.
It’s a thousand little things that make the transition tough. And I’m not saying that each one of these isn’t a fine way of doing stuff; it’s just different from a PC, and takes time getting used to.
Each application doesn’t have it’s own menu bar in its own window; there’s one menu bar across the top, and it corresponds to whichever application has “focus.”
There’s no start menu; instead you use a program called which works sorta like Explorer. There’s a row of icons along the bottom for commonly used applications, called a “dock,” but I still have programs decide to just remove themselves from the dock when I close them, no matter how many times I click, “always show in dock;” there is no desktop icon in the dock to get to a blank icon.
A lot of apps don’t tell you something went wrong. They just don’t do anything. And they don’t tell you they’re not going to anything, or in the process of doing something. They just leave you wondering whether they’re going to get it done or not.
The keyboard is different, and you’ll have to retrain your hands for all the key-combination commands.
Some very primitive Microsoft Applications are useful precisely because they do nothing other than whatever very simple function you want for them. Apple no print screen; no MS Draw; no Notepad (you can download Text Wrangler).
iWork sucks. You’ll need to get MS Office, anyway. (To save money, you can get Open Office, but surprisingly it works better on Windows.) But even MS Office on Mac is different than MS Office on Windows.
There are some very handy utilities, but configuring your computer (desktop, screen resolution, etc.) is thoroughly different. (You have to pick System Preferences from the apple logo in the upper left corner.)
And I was totally surprised by the lack of software. You’re probably not into video games?
On the other hand, if you’re getting a laptop, you have to be real careful getting a PC, since quality and engineering varies so much from brand to brand, and has little to do with price. I got a Dell which would shut down when overheated, and they put the fan intakes on the bottom, where they were always blocked. I had to get a fan board to rest it on!
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